How to create - Garmin Adventures

Turn your favourite walks into Adventures and share them on the Internet.

If you are a confident walker; spare a thought for other folk who arenít so sure where the best walks are by sharing your walking experiences on the internet. Route sharing with GPS guidance & directions is a modern phenomenon. Gone are the days when you had to research walks in books, refer to a paper map and then if you wanted to follow the route using a GPS, build a route perhaps in some mapping software and send to your device.

Route sharing allows you to visit a website, choose a suitable route with instructions and GPS friendly route/track that can be sent direct to your device. There are many route sharing website out there but the easiest & most suitable for Garmin & BaseCamp users is Adventures. If you have a My Garmin account you can transform the record of your trip (current track) and images (whether taken by a GPS or camera) by using the easy to use Adventures wizard found in BaseCamp.

Although itís possible to create an Adventure in BaseCamp on your computer without ever leaving home; its good practice to walk it first to ensure that your planned Adventure works and is safe, to allow you to think about walk description and to collect images to add interest & possibly even directions. Although we talk about creating an Adventure for walking it could be more or less for any activity walking, hiking, cycling or driving on or off road.

While you are on your planning walk consider and maybe make notes that may help you put together an interesting Adventure; such as:

- Accessibility and parking issues; itís always good to create a waypoint at your recommended parking spot and include a grid reference in your walk description.

- Think about how you would describe your walk and what activity you are going to give it; what level of difficulty would you give it bearing in mind that not everyone is super fit like you.

- Is your walk on good paths throughout or are there areas of testing terrain to cover all important for later when you have to create a walk description and give advice on the best time of year and what to take on your walk.

- What interesting things are there to see & do on the trail; make notes and take your camera (or better still use a GPS with integrated camera that automatically geo-references the image). Remember a picture tells a thousand words

- Are there any geocaches that can be collected on the way

- Importantly remember to enjoy your walk

GPST Tip – to ensure your current track is an exact record of your trip and doesnít include the journey to & from the start point of your walk. Clear your track & trip data at the beginning of your walk. In most Garmin GPS with will be > Main Menu > Setup > Reset > select Reset Trip Data & Clear Current Track. Importantly Save your current track at the end of your walk to ensure your track log includes just the walk and not your trip home.

Putting your Adventure together

I recently went on one of my favourite walks and thought it would be good to share; so I set out with that intention following the guidance included above; here is my work in progress seen in the wizard. Once published you can go back as many times as you want to publish and changes you might want. Here is a link to my published walk High Pike & Lingy Hut via Brandy Gill

Here are a few tips that may help you get started

- Connect your GPS to your computer

- Login to your My Garmin account

- Open BaseCamp and in the Library create & name New List Folder & List.

- Send current track & any images from your GPS to the named list

- Right Click on track in new list > select Create Garmin Adventure

- This opens the Adventures Wizard > now simply follow the on screen instructions > you will be required to give your work a title, description, choose a level of difficulty and select an activity that describes your adventure.

- Once you have completed this task > select Finish > your work will now be saved in your Library in the Adventures listing

- You now have the opportunity to review & edit your work before you publish it

- Once you are satisfied > select Publish

- To publish your work your will need internet access

- Itís as easy as that.

Search & Follow Adventures

Youíll be amazed how many adventures there are all freely available by simply searching for them using BaseCamp. In BaseCamp > select Find > Find Garmin Adventures > if youíre connected to the internet then the results of your search based on your map location will be displayed in the Adventures sidebar seen above.

Once you have the sidebar open you can amend your search by distance, difficulty and activity. To download an adventure > simply select > this displays a dialog box with a short description and download option > select Download to send adventure to your library from where you can > send to your device.

Once you have sent any adventures to your device they will be found in their own dedicated location > in Main Menu lower pane > select Adventures to view list of held adventures.

To follow an adventure > select from list > you will see the adventureís track overlaid on a map if you have one. At this point you can access the adventure description by tapping the named icon at the top of the page

To view photos associated with the adventure simple > select Content. When you are ready and at the correct location> select Start.

We hope that this short article encourages you to widen your horizons by using this great free resource. If you want more information about adventures visit www.gpstraining.co.uk or to speak to friendly GPS expert call 01669 621558